By GRAEME BOWD, Daily Mail, Wednesday September 26th 1973

JOHN NEWELL lost his family last April when an airliner taking West Country women and children to Switzerland on a day trip crashed in a snowstorm near Basle killing 108 people. But now, out of that tragedy, a new love has been born. 

For John Newell met Swiss Salvation Army girl Waltraud Christen through the horror of the crash in which his wife June. son Mark, 12, and daughter Rebecca, 11, died. When he went on a grim pilgrimage to Dornach to pray over the coffins of his family, the girl from the Salvation Army comforted him. 

Now they are planning a quiet wedding in Switzerland in November. Mr Newell, 39. said at his home In Roseberry Road, Redfield, Bristol You can imagine the state I was in when I first saw Waltraud I hardly noticed her. But she did everything for me “We became friends and wrote to each other, and I saw her when I went to Switzerland for a holiday. It was then that I proposed to her and she said yes”. Miss Christen, 30, said ‘We have a lot in common. John teaches at Sunday school and runs a youth club and I work full-time for the Salvation Army.